


玉蘭花 (yulanhua)

by englishsummerrain



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bodyswap, Language Barrier, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 23:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20281579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain
Summary: He always liked to imagine that the universe had a plan for him. The problem is, the universe can be kind of dumb sometimes.





	玉蘭花 (yulanhua)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bunnyctzen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyctzen/gifts).

> thank you to octie for betaing for me. you're a doll. <3
> 
> the title is because yulanhua/magnolia is the official flower of shanghai and im cheesy like that :)

When Jaemin was four, he believed there was a man made of shadows who lived under his bed — the only person in the world who could scare him away his mother. If fear gripped him, and it often did, he’d cry for her, leap out of his bed with his bunny rabbit in his arms and stumble across the carpet to hold onto her legs, ask her to scare the man away. 

Her weapon was her voice, and she wielded it well, sliced through his dark limbs with her soft tones, with her lullabies and bedtime stories. She would sit beside his bed on wooden chair and gaze at him, smooth his hair over his forehead and tell him how much she loved him. She would tell him about soulmates, about how the world had chosen someone special for him, and that one day he’d wake up in their shoes. It wasn’t scary, she’d say. It was so you’d know what it was like to be them, how the world looked through the eyes of the one who’d love you for the rest of their life. 

Jaemin loved this story because he always liked to imagine that the universe had a plan for him. He always liked to imagine there was a cosmic path he was destined to travel along, that it forked and turned, that he had choices to make but there were some things that were meant to be. He was meant to dance with his whole soul. He was meant to love to the depths of his heart. He was meant to meet people who would write their names on his skin and stay etched in his memory forever. 

  
  
  


One fork in the path goes like this:

  
  
  


It’s not the alarm he doesn’t recognise. It’s not the phone in Chinese, or the angry call with the person on the other end of the line yelling at him in rapid fire syllables. It’s not the moment of panic where he wonders if he somehow took a flight to China in his drunken stupor last night, after he turns on the light and gazes at the whiteboard covered in a foreign language. It’s not the giant bed, made for a king, the thread count of the sheets a number he never even learned how to count to. It’s not slipping on a pile of paper positioned like a booby trap in front of the door.

It’s when he stumbles out to the living room, groggy like he’s waterlogged. The world sharpens like someone has turned the focus on the lens and he’s left staring at the window over the couch, staring at a boy with hair the colour of purple sherbet. 

"Sorry," Jaemin says. “I think I got lost last night?” 

The boy's mouth moves in time with his, and he almost faints.

  
  
  


As Jaemin had grown up he’d learned more about soulmates, learned more about what he would expect after he turned eighteen. One day he’d wake up not himself and he’d have to find his way back to his body, touch his soulmate to return their bodies to normal. It seemed pretty simple. Cross globe swaps were rare, most of them happening in the same country. Korea was small enough that he didn’t feel concerned about having to make a cross country trip. 

His eighteenth birthday had passed, and he’d woken up himself. Every day after he’d woken up to the same room, the same posters on the wall, the same default alarm on his phone. The excitement that he’d meet his soulmate soon had lost its sheen and, when 2019 had come to a close and he still hadn’t swapped, the panic had set in. There was always the possibility that his soulmate was considerably younger than he was, but it still hurt seeing his friends, one by one, wake up not themselves.

The day after Donghyuck’s birthday Jaemin had found him bent over the bathtub, throwing up the poorly mixed strawberry vodka they’d downed the last night. Jaemin had gone to ask if he was okay and Donghyuck had just started _ screaming, _yelling at the top of his lungs.

Chaos descended on their tiny flat. Donghyuck, still yelling, had dived down again, splattered pink vomit all over the edges of the dusty bathtub and dry heaved. Jaemin had expected the noise to start again as he came up for air, but he’d just groaned and flopped helplessly against the floor.

“Donghyuck?” Jaemin had cautioned.

“I’m Jeno.”

_ Well. _

Donghyuck had been seething when they’d reunited, had chased Jeno around the building, trying to lay his hands on him so he could get back to his body, taking advantage of Jeno’s deep voice to shout across the courtyard like a sonic boom that he couldn’t believe Lee fucking Jeno was his soulmate. Being in Donghyuck’s body had possessed Jeno with the soul of the devil and it’d been a gruelling chase, both of them almost knocking over multiple plant pots and poor people who’d come out to investigate the racket. It had taken multiple laps for Jeno to give up, to collapse on the ground panting, whining that Donghyuck was out of shape.

After that clown circus Jaemin had expected something a little more fun from his body swap. Not ending up in what he presumed to be China, all by himself. He’s actually a little terrified, not only by how angry the voice on the other end of the phone had sounded, but by how he’s supposed to get back to his body right now. Is he going to have to take a plane on someone else’s passport, pretend to speak a language he doesn’t know a lick of? He's never even flown before, except for a family holiday to Jeju when he was eight. He doesn’t know where he’s supposed to get money to fly, considering his wallet is on his bedside table in Seoul. 

Jaemin kneels on the couch to stare at himself (at his soulmate? At himself in his soulmate’s body?) in the mirror. He touches his cheeks, pokes the ridge of his cheekbone, feels out his jawline. It’s like someone’s loaded him up in a suit, like he’s a pilot in a mech, every action he does in the safety of the cockpit transferring to a movement of this body.

He’s cute, at least. When he smiles his eyes turn into crescents and his cheeks puff up. He still has baby fat on his face, and it gives him a boyish appearance, despite the fact that, like Jaemin, his body is broad and tall. He touches his shoulders, crosses his arms across his chest, pokes at the freckles on his skin.

“My name is Na Jaemin,” he says. It echoes in the empty apartment, resonates differently in his throat, teases his vocal cords in ways his own speech doesn’t. His soulmate’s voice is a little deeper, less nasal, more smooth around the edges. He sounds almost lyrical. Jaemin feels a strange fondness about it. 

This is the voice he’s going to hear for the rest of his life.

He stands, walks in a circle. Stomps his feet. Stretches, tucks his leg back, tries to do the splits and almost pulls something. Not as flexible as him, then. 

The papers on the counter reveal nothing but letterheads in Chinese addressed to names he can’t read. He searches for signs of something recognisable, but everything seems to be foreign - even the vaguely threatening message the fridge displays on it’s LED screen as he pulls open the door.

_ Oh god, his fridge has a fucking talking screen. _

At least there’s food inside. He picks up a half empty takeout box, sniffs it to make sure it’s still good and throws it in the microwave. After some guesstimating at the control pad the plate starts to turn, and for the gargantuan effort that was he pours himself a glass of Coke as a reward. If he’s stuck here, he figures at least he’s going to enjoy the food.

He starts to go through the cupboards, finds dusty pots and pans, random snacks that look like they’re been abandoned with no real reason, a packet of some kind of sauce that expired in 2015, a burnt pair of tongs, broken disposable chopsticks, toy cars, happy meal toys and an altogether assortment of things that can’t possibly add together into this house being actually habitable. The only cookware that seems to get regular use is the frying pan lying half filled with water in the sink. A thin layer of oil floats on the surface and Jaemin pours it out hesitantly, leaves it upside down in the dish rack. He removes the takeout from the microwave and picks up a pair of chopsticks from the sparse cutlery draw, sits down at the counter and thumbs through the phone while he waits for it to cool, trying to work out what the fuck he’s supposed to do.

Call someone, probably. Call himself?

He stares for a second at the keypad, then realises he doesn’t know his own number. 

He does know Jeno's, the same he's had since middle school. In their boredom during maths class they’d made up a song with both their numbers, rendered moot by the fact Jaemin had lost his SIM card when he’d gone swimming with his phone in his pocket. Jeno still liked to sing it to him when he got drunk (which was often and liberally), elbow Jaemin until he joined in and they were belting it from their balcony. He hums it under his breath as he dials, as rests the phone on the counter and mashes the button that he hopes like hell is speaker.

He’s lucky Jeno is the kind to pick up foreign numbers.

“Jeno,” he says, “Jeno, are you busy?”

He’s acutely aware of how strange his voice sounds coming through someone else's lips, how the inflections are his, but the tone isn’t.

“Who is this?” Jeno asks.

“Jaemin. Please believe me, it’s Jaemin.”

Jaemin’s heart stops for a second before Jeno’s voice restarts it. “Okay.” 

“Jeno, where am I?” Jaemin breathes out. “I mean, where’s Jaemin? The person who looks like Jaemin, not me. Am I still asleep?”

“You’re,” Jeno pauses. There’s another voice in the background he thinks might be Donghyuck, then the sound of Jeno’s hand covering the speaker.

“Jeno!” Jaemin yells. 

“Hold up, Donghyuck says you just left the house.”

“I —” Jaemin is rendered speechless, his jaw hanging slack. Whoever is in his body just left the house. Without telling anyone. Without asking who or where he was. What kind of lunatic of a soulmate did he have? Was he destined to tear his hair out for the rest of his life, trying to deal with someone who apparently wakes up somewhere unfamiliar and decides a walk in the park is a good idea?

There’s a scraping noise on the other end of the phone and Donghyuck comes on the line. “I’m kidding,” he says, snickering. “You’re literally sitting right here. You don’t speak Korean, by the way. Renjun is on the way.”

“My soulmate doesn’t speak Korean?”

“Either that or he’s doing a good job of pretending he doesn’t. He looks bored. You look bored, Jaemin. Boring on the inside and the outside.”

Jaemin wants to reach down the phone and wrap his hands around Donghyuck’s neck. “Are you sure he doesn’t speak Korean?”

“He just keeps speaking Chinese to me, what do I know? Do I look like the fucking Rosetta Stone to you?”

Jaemin rubs his forehead, beginning to feel a headache brewing at the corners of his temple. “Can you put Jeno back on the line?”

“No,” Donghyuck says, and doesn’t elaborate. 

“Can you…” Jaemin peters out. “Where’s Renjun?”

“Jeno just went down to let him in. Thank god. I want to go back to sleep.”

“You really don’t care about me, do you?” Jaemin says.

“Absolutely not,” Donghyuck says. It’s so cheery that Jaemin wishes he was there to put a damper on it. Maybe put a garbage can on top of Donghyuck’s head, just for good measure. “Plus, I’m going to take a wild guess that you’re in the middle of China right now! So, I’m sure I’ll have a lovely amount of time to get acquainted with your new bestie. There's no rush.”

“You are genuinely despicable, Donghyuck.”

“I love you too,” Donghyuck says. He makes a kissing noise, then starts to laugh. 

Jaemin doesn't have time to seethe. Renjun is let into the room, and the first thing he does is tell Donghyuck to put him on speaker.

“That is so weird,” Renjun says, though Jaemin has no idea who he’s talking to. “Hi Jaemin.”

“Hi,” Jaemin says. Someone — him, the person in his body, whatever, this is really difficult for his head to process — starts speaking Mandarin. Over the top of him, Jeno and Donghyuck have started to argue over who needs to do the laundry — though it’s largely one sided.

It’s really very strange for Jaemin to hear his voice speaking another language, a language he’s only ever known through Renjun’s phone calls to his mother. Renjun translates occasionally, but it's rapid fire between the two of them, dispersed with both their laughs, and Donghyuck and Jeno, bickering like they’re already married.

He learns this.

His soulmate's name is Zhong Chenle. He turned 18 four months ago. Jaemin is in his Shanghai home, but he doesn't spend much time there, hence the mess.

"He's particularly apologetic about that one," Renjun adds. Jaemin chews on the now cool noodles and wonders that — if Chenle’s apologising for the 'eligible Bachelor' level of clutter — if he should apologise for eating Chenle's food. Probably not.

"Dude, he has five albums," Jeno says, when it's revealed Chenle is a singer. 

"He's a yodel specialist," Donghyuck adds.

"I don't see that anywhere," Jeno says.

"You really are no fun, aren't you?"

"Oh!"

Jaemin groans. The takeout box is empty, and he pushes it across the counter. For the amount Chenle and Renjun are talking, Jaemin understands little.

“Can someone clue me in?” he asks. “How am I getting out of here?”

"At this rate, I'm not even sure if you're coming back Jaemin,” Donghyuck says. “Shame, really."

“Chenle says he’ll pay for your flight back,” Renjun says. Donghyuck lets out a loud whine.

“He really doesn’t need to,” Jaemin starts. “I mean, I-” 

Renjun cuts him off. “He says it’s fine, trust me.”

“Really?”

“You’re flying on his passport, remember.”

Right. Jaemin supposes he is. He massages his forehead as he tries to think, trying to turn on his anti-Donghyuck filter. He’s making an absolute racket, and Jaemin is about five seconds away from yelling at him to shut up when Jeno does it for him, albeit it’s much calmer then what Jaemin envisaged. 

The depths of Jeno’s patience will never cease to amaze him.

“I guess I am,” Jaemin says. 

  
  
  


Shanghai airport is like navigating the minotaur's maze only by the light of Naver translate, but Jaemin somehow manages it, manages to find his gate and get on board well before it closes.

He shuts his eyes on one runway and opens them to another. Night-time consumes Seoul, like someone has thrown a blanket over the floodlight of the sky, the only light the stars that shine through the pinprick holes in its weave.

He can't stop flipping his passport open, staring at the photo, at the name, running his fingers over it. Zhong Chen Le. He stares at his face on the camera at customs, knits his brows together and opens his mouth, pulls strange faces, until someone prods him and tells him to go through already. 

It's a funny, fluttering feeling, to see yourself in a room that isn't a mirror. Funny to see yourself turn around, raise your hand and wave. To hear yourself speak in a language so strange, to laugh with muscles you didn't know you had.

Jaemin stands in the middle of the bustling arrivals hall and stares at himself. He stands funny, talks strange, smiles with the corners of his eyes and all of his teeth showing, looks at Renjun like they’ve known each other forever. Behind him, Donghyuck yawns, wraps his arms around Jeno's waist and hooks his chin over his shoulder. 

"Get on with it," he says.

Easy for him, Jaemin thinks. He shakes his head and looks back at Chenle, Chenle as him, grinning. He’s not vain to say he thinks he looks beautiful, but he knows if that smile were on Chenle’s body he’d find it just a little stellar.

"Hi," he says, not his own voice, but something that holds familiarity. Something he feels like he's been dreaming of since he was a child, though he had never recognised the sound until now.

"Hi," Chenle says. He laughs, again, soft, just a puff of air. He holds out his hand and wiggles his fingers, raises his eyebrows. The world stops, just for a split second Jaemin reaches out, hesitantly, a tremor running through his muscles. Their fingers brush, and then he's looking at Chenle, Chenle in his own body, not Chenle in Jaemin’s body. His eyes glimmer and he’s prettier under the lights than Jaemin could have known, so much more radiant through his own eyes than those he had borrowed. Chenle takes his hand, wraps their fingers together so that they fit like the petals of an unopened flower.

When he meets his eyes again, Chenle beams at him. It’s the cutest smile he’s ever seen, something that feels so natural to return. Donghyuck makes a gagging noise and Jeno elbows him in the gut. 

“Stop it.”

Jaemin just rolls his eyes. It’s gonna be alright, he thinks. He sweeps Chenle into a hug, and it’s gonna be alright.

  
  
  


When he was seven, Jaemin used to sit on the edge of his bed and hope the world would carry him to someone pretty. Someone who didn't make fun of him and his rabbit toy, like how the boys at school did. He wasn’t thinking of Chenle, but he was a child then, and now, nineteen and full of anticipation, he realises he truly could have never known where the path of stars would lead him. The shadow under his bed is long vanquished, and when he goes back home he sits on a wooden stool, tells his mother that he’s met his soulmate, that it’s hard work and sometimes he wants to beat Renjun with his Chinese textbook, but he’s getting there, little by little, learning anew. There are some things that transcend language and, when he holds Chenle’s hand, when he sees the way he looks at him, an entire galaxy of possibilities in his eyes, well, he thinks that might just be one of them.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/dongrenle) & [cc](https://curiouscat.me/goldhorn) <3


End file.
